Modulation of the N400 component in relation to hypomanic personality traits in a word meaning ambiguity resolution task

Abstract

We found differences in semantic processing (i.e., detection of incongruence and semantic inhibition) in individuals with higher Social Vitality subscores. In the light of the literature, we discuss the notion that a semantic processing impairment could be a potential marker of vulnerability to BD, and one that needs to be explored further in this clinical population.

Neural Correlates of Semantic Inhibition in Relation to Hypomanic Traits: An fMRI Study

“…The Social Vitality subscale estimates social potency and vivaciousness, but also reflects impulsivity traits ( 32 ). In our previous work conducted with ERPs on the same task, we found that the difficulty participants with higher HPS scores had handling the competition between different meanings of ambiguous words was related to modulation of the amplitude of the N400 component in frontal and frontocentral areas, and this modulation was in turn correlated with the HPS Social Vitality subscore ( 21 ). Taken together, these results provide evidence that high levels of hypomanic personality traits are associated with specificities in the processing of ambiguity resolution at the electrophysiological and neuroanatomical levels.…”

“…The semantic ambiguity resolution task, derived from the task developed by Hoenig and Scheef ( 22 ), featured 90 auditory context sentences, each followed by a written target word. The material has already been described in detail elsewhere ( 21 ). Briefly, half the priming sentences ended with a homophone, and the context of the sentence pointed toward the homophone’s subordinate meaning (i.e., ambiguous condition), while the other half ended with a control word that was synonymous with the subordinate meaning of the homophone (i.e., unambiguous condition; see Table 2 for an example).…”

“…But relatively little is known about the underlying cognitive mechanisms of language or thought disorders in hypomania. To the best of our knowledge, only two studies have so far investigated the relationship between language processing and hypomanic traits ( 20 , 21 ). Both were conducted by our team and used event-related potentials (ERPs) to assess the electrophysiological component of language processing.…”

“…The first one investigated the integration of contextual information in emotional situations, showing that participants with higher hypomanic traits exhibit specific modulation of the N400 component ( 20 ). The second one investigated the ability to inhibit semantic content in relation to HPS scores ( 21 ), with participants performing a semantic ambiguity resolution task adapted from Hoenig and Scheef ( 22 ). In this task, the successful disambiguation of homophony putatively requires semantic activation of the possibly relevant meaning and cognitive control over the contextually irrelevant meaning through semantic inhibition ( 23 ).…”

“…In this task, the successful disambiguation of homophony putatively requires semantic activation of the possibly relevant meaning and cognitive control over the contextually irrelevant meaning through semantic inhibition ( 23 ). Results revealed a positive relationship between scores on the HPS Social Vitality subscale and modulation of the N400 component in the frontal region of interest in the incongruent unambiguous (IU) condition and in the frontocentral region of interest in the incongruent ambiguous (IA) condition ( 21 ). The results of this study therefore suggest that individuals with high levels of hypomanic traits have difficulty handling the competition between different meanings of ambiguous words.…”